Collaborators’ ‘Another earth’ evolved from a daydream

Mike Cahill is the director and co-worker for the film “Another Earth” along with Brit Marling who also co-wrote along with starring in the movie. Photo by Earnie Grafton/The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Mike Cahill is the director and co-worker for the film “Another Earth” along with Brit Marling who also co-wrote along with starring in the movie. Photo by Earnie Grafton/The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Brit Marling was just 19 when she met Mike Cahill. Both were studying economics at Georgetown University, but Cahill was there that day as a director screening a short film at a campus film festival. By the time Cahill accepted his first-place prize, Marling knew her life was destined for more than spreadsheets and economic theory.

“His work was like nothing I’d ever seen before — colorful, poetic, rhythmic,” the now 27-year-old Marling gushed during a visit to San Diego to promote the science fiction drama “Another Earth,” which she stars in and co-wrote with Cahill. Not long after they met, Marling began working on Cahill’s films. By the time she graduated as valedictorian, she turned down a lucrative job offer from Goldman Sachs. Cahill was with her when the offer came in and notes with pride how she wrote back saying, “No thank you. I’m going to be an artist.”

The 32 year-old Cahill, who comes from a family of doctors and neuroscientists, also found himself on an artistic detour once he entered Georgetown. Yet his and Marling’s love of learning is refreshingly present in their process, based in intellectual inquiry and a mutual fascination with the human experience. In fact, their inspiration for “Another Earth” came from a “daydreaming” session in Cahill’s Silverlake home.

“We were thinking about the magic of the cosmos and the idea of meeting oneself,” Cahill explained. “The emotion behind that idea is something that we can’t exactly experience as humans, but it’s something that’s very revealing — to have that external perspective on ourselves, which I thought somehow reveals this human primal desire to connect.”

The duo translated this enigmatic concept by creating a duplicate of Earth that suddenly appears in the sky. From that point, the film explores how the second planet affects the lives of a woman (Marling) seeking redemption for a tragic misstep, and the man (William Mapother) whose life she destroyed.

A devoted science enthusiast and “sci-fi geek,” Cahill tried to keep the story in line with scientific principles, even consulting with renowned astrophysicist Dr. Richard Berendzen, whose audio book “Pulp Physics” was one of Cahill’s inspirations (the scientist’s voice is prominent in the film). Even so, Cahill had to make some sacrifices for the sake of storytelling, including cutting out references to how the new planet’s gravitational pull would affect Earth. With a budget of less than $100,000, the only special effects Cahill could muster to illustrate the principle came out looking “hokey,” so he tossed them aside.

“I intended those things to be there, but ultimately the story’s about the metaphor — the heart and the human condition,” Cahill said. Though a few science fiction fans have been perturbed, the film took home the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for the best film focusing on themes of science and technology at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, as well as the Special Jury Prize for Dramatic Feature.

Grounded entirely on Earth with no significant special effects, “Another Earth” might not look like a typical science-fiction film, but Marling thinks it still delivers. “What people really want from sci-fi is a sense of wonder or awe. And this film does it differently — not with CGI explosions or aliens ripping people’s guts out,” she explained. “The spectacle is in the imagination and, I think for true sci-fi people, that’s what it’s really about.”

With a love story and a secret at the story’s center, Marling describes the film as meeting “at the center of a thriller, sci-fi and romance,” an unusual blend of genres that Marling has seen speak to a broad range of audiences. “What’s so weird about this movie is that everybody seems to find themselves in it somewhere,” Marling said. “I think young people respond to it stylistically,” she continued, referencing Cahill’s guerrilla filmmaking style. “And I notice people my parents’ age really connect with it, because they’re more prone to meditating on different life outcomes and scenarios.”

Cahill is blown away by the film’s reception. “Our ambition was to make something that could move us and we could show our friends — and that was it,” he said. “But the fact that it was accepted at Sundance and received so well, it’s like the dream that we never allowed ourselves to dream. It’s unbelievable.”

Cahill and Marling are close to closing a deal on their next collaboration, a film about reincarnation. Though Cahill will have a healthier budget this time, he’s not planning on changing his approach. “I love the idea of taking reality, adding a twist and telling the human drama inside,” he said. “That one twist allows us to get a little closer to understanding one aspect of the human condition.”